Going back in time
by KitiKat
Summary: If only they had not been so stupid. Haven't you ever wished you could step into the movie and lead those people in the right direction? Maybe go back in time? Carly gets a chance to stop the murders and stop her friends from getting killed.


You know how some people suddenly have an insatiable sex drive that they have to quench somehow? Well, I had to write this story. I'm terrible with details, but the point of this story is not to be good; it is to be told. If you know of The House of Wax from 2005, you'll recognize the point of the story.

"Carly?"

She looked up from her glazed glance down at the hospital floor. Her nurse came in, smiling and happy. She had to have known what Carly had been through. So what the fuck was she smiling about?

"Hi," Carly said, tersely. She didn't want anyone to smile right now. Couldn't they understand? Did they not read the goddamned papers?

"I need to look at your finger," the nurse continued in what seemed to Carly a trained tirade.

"I'll never get my finger back," Carly said. "No matter what." And she looked at the nurse, slowly propping the finger in her own hand; looking at the healing. Carly could feel her throat closing up and her tears welling. She couldn't believe she was crying over her lost finger, but she was. The nurse acted as if she was happily sitting up in bed.

"Well, what could you do?" Carly looked at the nurse with self-pity. Her lips were perfect; untouched by lip gloss. A perfect shade and layer of skin. At once, Carly flashed back to the searing of her lips in that garage and the wax figures. Knowing what had happened to Wade.

"I could have not stuck my fucking finger through that fucking grate. I knew that the man was trouble. Why did I do it . . ." She then began blubbering, not only mourning her finger. "Why did I do it?" She looked again to her finger and her thoughts disappeared and she just sobbed. Sometime through her mirage of the events that had transformed themselves into tears within her, she saw Nick in the doorway, but she could not bring herself to care anymore, the events of the previous week finally having a chance to simmer within her.

It was sunny when Carly awoke the next morning. She stretched, feeling oddly energetic. Then, she realized something that did not take a genius to figure out.

She was not in the hospital.

Furthermore, she was not in her room.

Wade's room. She was in Wade's room.

"How the hell did I get in here?" She asked no one, staring at the ceiling for her answer, perhaps the white paint giving her some sort of epiphany. She jumped when the mattress creaked beside her and a familiar feeling of muscles and thick hands curved around her elbow. A cold feeling spreading through her, she slowly looked to her left.

She screamed at the sight of Wade leaning toward her to embrace her.

"Carly!" She realized she was naked as soon as she had scurried off the bed and grabbed the blanket, pulling it up to her front. Trying with no avail to catch her erratic breath, she stared at Wade.

"No. No. This is a dream. This is a DREAM!" She shook her head and heard the sounds of her panic.

"Carly! What's wrong? Carly." Wade got out of the bed himself and helped her tie the blanket around her skinny body. "Carly, baby, tell me what's wrong. Okay? You got to tell me what's wrong. I mean, you just jumped out like that as if I were some stranger."

She swallowed. "Wade, Wade." She looked up at him, feeling hot tears in the crevices of her eyes, staying put for now. She embraced him quickly with one arm, still holding the blanket as if Wade's arm securing the blanket had been imaginary. "What day is today?"

"The tenth," he replied, his eyes showing amusement.

"The tenth," Carly repeated, slowly thinking. "Year, month?"

"May tenth, two-thousand and five."

"Shit. Shit, shit. Holy shit." No holding back the tears now. She knew at once that Wade loved her, but he wasn't going to believe her. No one would except crazies, and no one believed anything crazies said.

"Carly, honey." Wade looked at her, some amusement gone. "Talk. To me. Please."

If only she could alert the police as to what was going on. An investigation. The evidence was all in the town. Yes. Yes.

"Wade, get dressed. We are going down to the police station."

"What; why?"

"You won't believe me if I tell you, so I won't. You just have to trust me."

"You know I trust you."

Carly glanced at him for a few seconds. "You don't trust me that much, honey.

-

-

Getting in the car, Wade persisted in asking Carly to confide in him. All the way to the halfway between his house he shared with his two friends and the police station, he pleaded with her to trust him.

He had no idea what she was thinking; that was the reason Carly would not tell him.

Parking the car in a convenient spot, Wade didn't try to press Carly anymore, finally just mentioning that she was acting really weird.

They entered the police station, coming upon an officer on the phone, running a pen through his ear crevice. Finally, hanging up, he looked at Carly. "Yes, hi, may I help you?"

Carly started to swallow but stopped herself. "I have to inform you of a massive murder. My name is Carly."

"A murder?"

"Yes. A town. Ambrose?"

"Never heard of it."

"Well, you might want to look it up. Listen, you are going to want to go up there. And take a look around. And do more than that. When you go to that town, and you see that it's empty, except for a few sculptures, poke your finger into those sculptures. And you know what will happen? Your finger will dig its way into human flesh. Bend a so-called sculpture, and you will see muscle; you will see skin; you will see the decaying human form that two men have made into nothing but wax for a fucking wax museum. And there are two men that you need to arrest. No. 3. They did it. They murdered tourists and passerbyers and townspeople for their own sick obsession with wax figures. I don't know why, but they are."

"Do you have any proof of this?"

"Listen. I will pay you twenty thousand dollars if I'm wrong. How's that sound?"

"What?" The police was incredulous. "Twenty thou?"

"Yes. It is all of my savings, but I know I'm right. I swear. I will write it right now. Anytime. But I'm right. You have to go there, kill or arrest the 3 brothers and finally take the town back and give those people encased in wax justice."

"Carly, now look—"

"Like I told my boyfriend here," she said. "I won't tell you how I know. All you need to do is believe me and check it out. But be careful. Bring weapons. If they see you, they will kill you. They want to kill you. Anyone that comes into the town, they turn into wax. Their bodies become the basis for a wax figure. They encase their bodies in hot wax, destroying their skin and anatomy from the outside in. And you die like that. You have to see it. Sheriff, please. Or please inform the sheriff."

"I'm no sheriff," The man chuckled. "But I will be informing someone and I'll be sure to tell you if we check it out."

"If? No. This is a murder, and you WILL check it out. Like I said. Twenty grand in it for you, right? Win-win." She put both hands on the table, letting her weight fall to her arms. "Maybe you aren't hearing me. People are being MURDERED in that town. Okay? You have to listen to me."

The man held up his hand. "Okay, okay, lady. I hear you. I hear you." She looked at him hard, and then straightened up to go. "I'm offering you MONEY, you know, if I am wrong. Which you obviously think I am." She shook her head, feeling dizzy with the fact that she couldn't seem to stop what had happened before. "Don't do this, sir. Don't make more people die."

"Listen to Carly, sir. I know my girlfriend and she is not crazy. I think she is telling the truth." Carly looked back at him and smiled. He was being sincere. His eyes were level and his shoulders erect. He was truly on her side.

"Okay. Okay. Miss, I'll send a group of men out."

Carly barely contained herself. "Thank you. Thank you so much. Um, do you need my phone number or anything?"

"Yeah. That would be nice." The desk clerk began rummaging.

"Wait." Wade said. "You aren't scamming her. No. I'm coming with you. For all we know, you are going to say you didn't see anything or not go at all." Carly nodded.

"I'm coming, too. I can tell you where to look or where to go."

"We'll stay here," Wade said. "Until we get a time and place that we meet to go there."

"Alright."

"Today." Wade persisted. "Today, alright?" The desk clerk was typing something. "Alright?!"

"You kids are annoying."

"We're 22."

"Right." Carly ran her fingers through her hair. "Dammit," she muttered.

By afternoon, Carly and Wade were getting ready to travel to Ambrose with a team of police cadets dressed in plainclothes as suggested by Wade. Before getting in the car with two of the police, Carly hugged Wade.

"What was that for?"

"I'm just happy you're with me. I love you."

Wade was silent, his eyes saturated in hers. "That's the first time you've said that to me."

"It's how I feel," She said, giving him a kiss. "I lost you once."

"Carly, you never lost me."

"Maybe when we get to Ambrose, you'll remember," she said. Although she doubted it. Wade shrugged and opened the car door. She hopped in.

The officer in the drivers' seat turned to her. "When we get there, I'm going to give you a gun, like you asked. Fully loaded, and no funny business."

"There's nothing funny here. We're trying to stop more murders," Carly said. "Do I have to repeat myself?" She sighed and pummeled her head against the backseat. "Fuck it."

"Carly," Wade said, brushing her hair from her forehead. "Relax. Okay? Let's just enjoy the ride."

"Enjoy the ride? Fine. Look, I've been at the police station for hours trying to get people to listen to me make a valid case and I'll be happy when these guys here finally see the bodies underneath the wax and arrest the brothers Bo and Vincent and the other dude." They were silent, and Carly knew that Wade was wondering about her again, wondering how she knew. Carly started to have an internal debate: Was she imagining that he was doubting her; he had been on her side in the police station. Was Wade remembering, at least in the back of his mind? Could she trust him now?

"I went back in time," she said in a low voice. Wade's arm around her didn't budge.

"What?"

"You heard me," she said, not looking at him. "You heard the unbelievable story. Now hear the unthinkable. I went back in time. And don't tell me it was a fucking dream because I'm not a little kid and I know the difference between a dream and reality. Wade, you got murdered. All our friends we hang out with got killed. Paige, Blake . . . only me and my brother survived. Wade, I was given a second chance. To make things right." Now she looked at him. "But I don't want to be the only one that remembers. Please tell me that you remember."

"Maybe you are the only one."

"Well, I haven't spoken to anyone else about this, so maybe if Nick remembers, you would. Or someone else. I'd like it if someone else was trying to stop us all from running from crazed murderers. Wade, please. Believe me."

"I do, Carly. I do. I have faith in you." She put her head against his shoulder. "But, you know, if we find nothing there, or Ambrose doesn't exist, Carly, it's going to be hard to believe, you know."

"I know. You'll see."

The closer they got to Ambrose, the more Carly was able to give directions. And the more she was confident that she could see Dalton, Wade and Paige again. Together again.

"Near here is where we saw that man," she said. "When you see him, you got to arrest him. Cuff his hands and feet and mouth." The car jolted and jumped through brambles and bushes and rocky roads.

It wasn't until they got past yet another conglomerate of bare trees that an officer mentioned to Carly that there was a man back there. She looked back, but didn't need any time wasted to know that it was the third brother.

"If we arrest him when we disappear from his vantage point and catch up to him and he hasn't done anything, we could get sued."

"My boyfriend will pay you 500 dollars if you're wrong in arresting him. How about that—"

"Carly. Carly. I don't have that much money."

"Why not? All you've done is save from your job,"

"Um, I spent it."

Carly was beside herself. "What? Wade, how could you?"

"I lost it at the slots."

"Wade, honey, you don't gamble. Come on. Where's the money? Can you get it back?"

"Only if I sell your engagement ring." Carly gasped. The cadet in the passenger seat chuckled and she tersely snapped at him to shut up and she looked back at Wade. "You were going to ask me to marry you? Oh my God." She hugged him as best she could in the car. "You—you—you're amazing, honey. And I would have said yes."

"I guess this is what they call an indecent proposal. I was keeping it because someday, I just knew. I just knew that I would be ready to ask you to spend the rest of your life with me."

"But I don't care," Carly said. "I love you. If you're ready 10 years from now, I'll accept." Wade gave his trademark grin and Carly kissed him, again reveling in the fact that he was back.

"We're going to stop here." Carly let go of Wade and got her bearings. And she frowned.

"Do you even know where you are?" Neither answered.

"Do you know where the fuck you are?! She asked, louder, her mouth open in anticipation. "Because if you don't, you are going to get killed. So you'd better know where you are. Do you know?"

"Do you?"

"Do you?"


End file.
